Gary Harkins
08/11/2009, North Channel, Ontario

I got up this morning about 0800, Patty stayed in bed a little longer. I sent Buster to shore with the Frisbee that he has destroyed, that's the only one we allow him to take to shore, but he left it there when he came back to the boat. I'll have to go to shore with him later to see if we can find it. Patty is making eggs, potatoes, and Canadian bacon for breakfast and it's starting to smell really good! The winds picked up out of the North last night and straightened out our anchor chain lying on the bottom which moved us towards shore a little. Nothing dangerous, but I'll be taking in a little anchor rode, to pull us further offshore, after breakfast.

I started the generator to do a little cleaning. A little turned into a lot! We went through the whole boat. The interior looks pretty good now. I wish I could say the same thing for the exterior. It is a pretty day and it's already 1220 so it's time to do something more fun than cleaning!

We went for a swim and I tried to find Buster's Frisbee. The swim was successful, the Frisbee hunt was not! We were going to go over to the sand beach on the west end of this anchorage and throw one of the good Frisbees for Buster, but there were some dark clouds coming in. Before we could even get in the dinghy it started to rain. The rain came down quite hard for about ½ hour and then quit. The clouds are back to being white, fair weather clouds so we'll probably get to do something yet this afternoon.

Patty decided to stay on the boat and practice her banjo. I took Buster to shore and went blueberry hunting. Hunting is the operative word here, as I found a grand total of 11 blueberries! We split the last of the venison burger into two meals and had the last half tonight along with a salad and applesauce. We still have about five meals of venison chops and steaks. We'll be leaving here tomorrow morning for Fox Island. Fox is a beautiful anchorage. Some of my favorite pictures are of our boat anchored in Fox.

There were prizes at Roy's party and plenty of food.

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Gary Harkins
08/10/2009, North Channel, Ontario

We got up at 0710 this morning and had the boat ready to travel and the anchor up by 0750. We made the trip around the west side of Strawberry Island and were waiting at the swing bridge for the 0900 opening. We stopped at Wally's Dock and got 29 liters of diesel (that's about 7.5 gallons). We then moved a little way down the "wall" and tied up near the Little Current town dock office. Yippee!!! We have 5 bars of signal from a public wifi called nemidowntown. I did about 9 blog updates and caught up on my email, Patty also caught up on her email, we went to breakfast at the Anchor Inn, got some provisions, called Patty's mother, and took on water. After spending some leisure time at the docks we left for Matheson Island. We had to motor down the channel going west out of Little Current, but once we were clear of the buoyed channel we were able to sail up the Wabuno Channel and then tack most of the way westward to Matheson Island. We pulled in the sails about 2 miles from Matheson Island and motored the rest of the way. When we arrived there were already 2 boats here. This has been a busy year in the North Channel. Other than the first night at Mill Lake we haven't had an anchorage to ourselves, and that is very unusual. We set the anchor and took a line to shore. Buster insisted on swimming to shore to help me get the line tied to a tree. We settled in for the evening and had venison chops, beans, and potatoes for dinner. Matheson Island is at Lat 46d 05.8m N Long 082d 05.3 W. We'll probably spend tomorrow just relaxing here before moving on to the Fox Island anchorage on Wednesday.

The picture is of Roy Eaton who is the voice behind the "Little Current Cruisers Net. He sponsored a pot-luck party and everyone who checks in with the Net was invited.

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Gary Harkins
08/09/2009, Just east of Killarney

If we hadn't passed within a few yards of this marker all you would be able to see would be fog. The day was trying it's best to be warm, but the cold water was producing fog that limited visibility to less than 100 yards.

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